Atherstone to Hopwas 4 locks, 9 mile, 4.5 hours.

Left Atherstone at 7:40, we still had two locks to do to complete the Atherstone flight.

We continued to travel alongside the East Coast mainline.

We had a couple more locks to go through at Glascote, progress was slow through here as there were three boats in front of us waiting to go through, a canal traffic jam!

We then cruised on via Fazeley junction, this is where the Birmingham and Fazeley canal joins the Coventry, not very scenic but the industrial view reminds you of the original purpose of the canal network.

We then crossed the River Tame which looked really pretty, a real contrast with countryside in the front but the high rises of Tamworth in the background.

We then moored at Hopwas, which is very close to Tamworth, excellent download speed on the dongle ( important as Rod was doing Tech helpline the next day) but there should be this close to a mobile phone mast, lovely pub here which we have stopped at previously the Tame Otter, which I am sure we will visit over the next couple of days as Rod s working Wednesday and Thursday.

We were woken at 4:00 on Tuesday night by George pacing around, we discovered a couple of lumps on his neck which he obviously scratched and made them bleed.  We managed to settle him, but at 6:50 he was pacing again, we discovered several more lumps, so as Rod needed to work I took George back to the vets in Lutterworth for open surgery at 9:00.  The vet advised he had some kind of allergic reaction, came him a steroid injection, a antihistamine injection, antihistamine tablets and antibiotics - this took the lumps down quickly but he remains out of sorts and very clingy but hopefully he will be back to himself in the next couple of days.

He is currently curled up by my feet.  The upside for him is we are having to mix his tablets in Tuna - his favourite.